As I was driving to town a car approached from the other direction. Not an uncommon event, but this particular car had its passenger door wide open which caught my attention. And then the swerving started back and forth all the way into my lane which forced me to slam on my brakes to steer out this idiots way. If I hadn't braked and swerved hard we would have hit head-on. As they passed me I noticed a man and a woman fighting over the steering wheel and as my phone had been thrown almost under the dash from having to brake so forcefully so I had to find a place to pull over to call our police dispatch.

Come to find out it was a domestic dispute and a couple of miles past where we almost collided he stabbed her and forced her out of the moving vehicle. Several people must have been calling about this because EMS passed me a few minutes later responding to where she had been dumped. Interesting trip to town!

I have a pear tree which bears every year. This year I decided to make some pear wine. Now I have never had a drink of pear wine nor do I know if it will taste good but thats not going to stop me from trying. There are recipe's out there for it so I know it's been done before and really any fruit that has sugar can be made into a wine.

I started by picking a bushel of pears:

And really all the rest of the process consisted of was cutting up the pears, boiling them for 20 minutes, pouring off the liquid into a primary fermenter, adding some additives, adding lots of sugar, and repeating the steps until I had five gallons of pear juice.

Tomorrow I will check the sugar content and my goal is to achieve 1.08 specific gravity which should yield about 10% alcohol content. Everything I've read about pear wine says that 10% is the ideal percentage as anything greater leads to off-tastes. I'll probably have to add some sugar to achieve this after which I will pitch my yeast. Then it's pretty much a waiting game of racking and letting the wine develop its flavor.

You should consider trying to make Perry too. I'm making cider and hadn't heard of Perry until researching that. I'm liking the shortish turnaround time on cider although going to take a year break from consumption (need to get fit).

Its hard for me to believe that the domestic dispute started in the car. I don't see a fight over what song they wanted to listen to or whether they should turn on the A/C or drive with the windows open leading to a maniacal fight with knives and open doors. It most likely started in the house with something like "I don't give a shit about whether or not its your body, get in the car so can we can get to the fuckin abortion clinic."

I don't know what started it but it's done now. Initially I had thought about turning around and following them because I knew they were going to crash but then I thought better as I didn't want to get shot. Here's an excerpt from the news:

A woman was stabbed after attempting to flee a moving vehicle. Deputies say that Brian K. Lainhart, of Lexington, held the woman against her will. When she fled, officials say Lainhart stabbed the victim in the back.

When deputies caught up with the suspect, they say he fled. Eventually, Lainhart crashed in a wooded area. He was charged with fleeing and evading, assault of a police officer, resisting arrest, first-degree assault, kidnapping and leaving the scene of an accident.

Lainhart is currently being held on a $100,000 bond. The victim is stable.

@Saving
I don't know what Perry is to be honest. I'll have to look it up. Thanks for the suggestion.

I made cider a couple of years ago and it was ok, very drinkable but not something I would make again. The wine and the beer I make is much more enjoyable for my tastes.

As I was making this yesterday my wife reminded me that our liquor stores had hundred of selections of wine ready for consumption. As in "why are you doing this?" I replied "You just don't get it, do you?"

It's interesting, usually when you see "evading capture" and "assault of a police officer" and "resisting arrest" the mug shot will show that they sustained severe trauma when they crashed their car and bounced their face off the steering wheel 20 or 30 times. But his mug shot seems remarkably healthy.

What I get from that mugshot is an expression of no compunction and someone who is just fucking fed up. He is probably upset that his wife is still alive and now he has to spend the rest of his life in prison for attempted murder. He'd probably be smiling if it was a murder charge. That was a man intent on killing his wife, and why I was completely off base. I don't see him going off the rails because she forgot to bring the coupons. This seems absolutely pre-meditated, just unfortunately (at least from his vantage point) poorly conceived and mind boggling ill-executed. Trying to drive with one hand while plunging a knife into your wife's back on a curvy road are not the conditions for a successful murder. I'm thinking he had wanted to murder her for a while and she set him off and he was drunk enough to finally carry through. I'm just surprised he didn't have a better plan in place. That being said, she should have known better. What man volunteers to drive his wife to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon.

My wife knows not to get a cruise ship with me because I have always said that is the best way to dispose of someone. Too bad he didn't post here, we could have helped him save for it and he wouldn't be in this mess.

Normally I wouldn't bore people with a generic picture of a cat but there's a funny story behind this one.

This cat showed up at my place about 4 months ago. Mind you, it was half-starved with patches of fur missing from its back end, had fleas and worms, and there is a rib that is misplaced in its chest cavity. I assume it had a rib broken and it never healed properly. Now, my dog tormented this cat but the damn thing would not leave and my daughter kept feeding it. Nobody wanted it and none of the neighbors claimed it so I decided to fix it. We killed most of the fleas right away (those bastards are tough to kill), gave it deworming medicine, protected it from the dog, and fed it as much as it wanted.

I determined early on it was a female so yesterday I took her in to get a rabies shot and spayed as I did not want more cats. I dutifully got to the vets early and checked her in, filled out the paperwork, and they informed me that I should come back around 4 that afternoon to pick up the cat after having been spayed. So as I am driving home I get a call from the vets office and the woman is laughing. She informed me that the cat that was checked in under the name Ms. Kitty should be changed to Mr. Kitty!

Now obviously I am not an expert on feline genitalia but in my defense she explained that the cat had been neutered already and what I mistook for her lady parts was actually this guys deflated and somewhat inverted scrotum. She thanked me for entertaining the office that day and I got to pay for anesthesia as they didn't determine this until he was already out and ready for surgery. Fun times.

In other and less costly news I managed to view the eclipse even though I somehow failed to acquire eclipse glasses. I waited until the day before to buy a pair and guess what? That's right, I was on my own and challenge accepted. My next thought was a welders helmet but I didn't want to be that guy that buys something for one use then returns it for a full refund the next day. So I simply went to the local welding shop and bought a shade 12 glass insert and made my own. Cost less than 4 dollars.

Here's a shitty picture of the eclipse with the stars also visible. I could see everything perfectly but my camera phone would not take a clear picture at all. Believe me, I tried dozens of times. We achieved about 95% coverage where I live and it got dusky but never dark. Neat experience.

Also built a cupola for a friend the other day. I thought it turned out ok considering he had no plans. We just kind of made it up as we went along. He'll put a metal roof on the top and plexiglass in for the windows as well as paint it. He's also going to place a weather vane on top as well and a light inside and place it on top of his barn. I'll try to get a picture of it once it is installed and finished. I've never built one before so that was interesting.

Check this bad-boy out, or rather bad-girl:

It's a black and yellow garden spider. They can bite but are generally harmless. The females are huge but the males are drab and small. I'm generally not a spider fan but these are pretty neat and they eat a lot of the pests so I leave them alone. They can startle you though as they are so big. This has nothing to do with ERE other than to highlight that I have time to pay attention to such things and I think it's interesting.

Seriously, he looks pissed. Like any male who has been unintentionally confused for a chick. I hate cats and have no idea how they procreate but if you are thinking of settling into something long term with him, I'm thinking you need to get him something, and I don't mean a ball of yarn.

Funny cat story. Yes that looks like a male cat. Male and female cats have different looks to them. Monty was also neutered when he showed up and had missing fur and was basically starving. Not sure you made the right choice in keeping him as these tramp cats that show up are extremely attached/needy/annoying once you display any love for them.

@Katherine
I'm glad you like it. Half the time I feel like I'm boring the pants off of people but I'm happy it resonates with people like you. Maybe it's a Kentucky thing.

@Jason
When I went to pick him up the vet tech relayed the story of a cat that had come in that was a hermaphrodite. It had both male and female genitalia and was of great interest to the whole staff. Mine is just a ball-less male unfortunately.

I used to kid he had resting bitch face btw.

@cmonkey

Well of course he looks like a male now! Where were you yesterday when I needed help? I almost want to take a picture of his ass to defend myself. haha

To be honest, I like him better than our other cat, which is definitely a female, as he is very affectionate. He'll start purring even before you pet him and loves his belly getting rubbed. This is the other cat:

We got her through someone else's divorce and "could we keep her for just a while". It's been ten years now.

It's been a very busy past two days as the grape harvest was ready to pick. I have relatives that own a small vineyard that really doesn't earn a whole lot of money so they are always looking for volunteers to help pick. It's one of the downsides of not having a job actually, always being available for such things.

I've posted about this in the past but a couple of new changes have occurred, namely I've developed a better system for crushing the grapes and I'm making a red wine too this year. Here I am working hard, picking grapes like a madman, haha.

They have a small row of Chambourcin grapes which didn't produce a whole lot so they said I could have what was there. It amounted to about 4 gallons. They are a pretty grape with a really sweet taste.

After crushing:

I'm making a full 5 gallons of the white wine this year which required about 20 plus gallons of grapes. My new system is fairly low tech, mainly involving taking a bucket and drilling holes all around the perimeter.

I then place this bucket in a larger bucket, after which I fill the one with holes with grapes. The I crush them with my hands and the juice leaks into the larger bucket.

I tried crushing them with another bucket used as a plunger, but it wasn't happening, so I had to resort to simply getting my hands in there and squeezing. Once I had accumulated a gallon or two of juice I would pour it into the fermentor bucket with a screen on top. It took about an hour to process about 80 pounds of grapes.

My final result. Five and half gallons of white grape juice and three gallons of red grape juice. I pitched the yeast tonight so now it's a waiting game. I'm hoping to get two gallons of finished red wine and five gallons of white.

When I was in college, I used to travel around with a poster of Henry Fonda in his earnest yet haunted depression era Tom Joad pose and then I see that picture of you standing there with that sheepish, I'm a half-assing volunteer bullshit expression.

@Jason
I don't know what that means but I'm taking it as a compliment whether intended or not. Sometimes I have the same blank stare after reading one of your posts similar to when I read 7wannbe3. Trust me, it's me, not you guys. Carry on.

New project. Started a four day job building an outbuilding with a guy I sometimes work after he called and asked for help. These kind of jobs are pretty easy and fun and I thought some of you would like to see how an outbuilding comes together. Results of day !: